U.S. Agents Arrest Dozens of Fathers in Support Cases

ASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — Federal agents in 29 states have arrested dozens of fathers who owe millions of dollars of child support, in a nationwide sweep that officials describe as a significant expansion of the federal role.

More notable than any one arrest, the officials say, is the message that the Bush administration is sending about its decision to pursue a more aggressive approach by using federal criminal prosecution against people who have repeatedly flouted state court orders.

Even though child support collections have increased in recent years, many parents still evade their obligations by moving from state to state and job to job. Surveys by the Census Bureau suggest that one-third of the parents entitled to child support under court orders or agreements are not receiving it.

In the last two weeks, federal agents, working with state and local law enforcement officers, have arrested 69 people on charges of not paying child support. Federal agents are hunting for 33 others named in indictments or criminal complaints. The defendants together owe more than $5 million, and the 69 already arrested account for $3.4 million of the total, the government said.

"This is just the beginning," said Matthew P. Kochanski, a criminal investigator at the Department of Health and Human Services. "You can expect to see many more regional and national efforts. We're ready to enforce this law in a coordinated way."

Federal officials said most of the defendants had not made payments in several years. Their individual arrears are $7,500 to $297,000.

"These arrests will have a ripple effect," said Sherri Z. Heller, commissioner of the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. "We believe that other people who want to avoid this fate will come in and pay up."

All the defendants are fathers, though the government said that in a separate case, on Aug. 13 it arrested a woman who owed $86,000 for two daughters in Ohio, ages 11 and 12. The government said the woman was earning $100,000 a year as a doctor in the Northern Mariana Islands.

The crackdown, which included arrests in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, has bipartisan support. It grows out of a small pilot program that began in a few states in the Clinton administration and was expanded by Tommy G. Thompson, the current secretary of health and human services.

"These parents have a demonstrated ability to meet their financial responsibilities to their children, but have consistently refused to provide the support they owe," Mr. Thompson said.

Janet Rehnquist, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, who coordinated the arrests, said the defendants included some of "the nation's most-wanted deadbeat parents."

Among those taken into custody, the government said, were an Oklahoma sheet metal worker who has not made child support payments in 16 years and owes $297,000; a Tennessee engineering company employee who has not made a payment in nine years and owes $264,000; and an Illinois man who has not paid more than $101,000 over the last five years even though he earned as much as $1.1 million one year as a professional football player.

The football player, James E. Harris, a former defensive end for the Oakland Raiders and the St. Louis Rams, owed child support for a son living in Pennsylvania, the government said.

A criminal information filed against the Oklahoma man, James A. Circle, says he earned more than $39,000 a year and had been ordered to pay $350 a week for a child in New Jersey. The indictment of the Tennessee man, Stanley A. Gagne, says he owes child support payments for a son and a daughter in Vermont.

Under federal law, a person who willfully does not pay a child support obligation of more than $10,000 for a child living in another state may be fined $250,000 and imprisoned up to two years. In addition, it is a felony to cross state lines to evade child support obligations of more than $5,000.

Tens of thousands of parents, mostly fathers, are so poor that they cannot pay child support. But officials said the people arrested in the last two weeks had enough income and assets to meet their obligations.

"These are deadbeat dads, but they are not dead broke," said Ben St. John, a spokesman for the inspector general.

Over the last decade, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives have united to toughen the law on child support for welfare recipients and more affluent parents. A parent's duty to support a child, they agree, is more serious than ordinary commercial debts.

The federal government granted itself jurisdiction over interstate child support cases in 1992, but federal prosecutors initially showed little interest. A first offense was only a misdemeanor until 1998, when Congress rewrote the law. United States attorneys have sporadically filed cases since then, securing 143 convictions last year and 98 this year.

"The recent arrests represent a new avenue of enforcement. There hasn't been a nationwide coordinated effort like this before," said Mr. Kochanski, the federal investigator. "We asked the states for the worst of the worst, the most egregious cases, in which they could not enforce child support orders."

Reached at a restaurant that he runs in San Diego, one of the defendants, Fariborz M. Monajami, said he was "very surprised to be arrested after all these years." He spent four days in jail and was released on Aug. 9 after posting a $10,000 bond.

His indictment, returned in Federal District Court in Fort Worth, says Mr. Monajami made no child support payments from 1990 to 1997. He owes more than $76,000 under a child support order issued in 1990.

Mr. Monajami said he had canceled checks showing that, beginning in 1997, he had paid a total of $25,000 to his son and daughter while they were in college.

Another one of those arrested, Dr. George M. Lewis, a psychiatrist in California, acknowledged, "I have an arrearage," but said he did not know the amount. The government says he owes $64,976.

"The government tried to entrap me in a crime and undermine my ability to earn a living," he said. "That's the reason I'm behind in child support."

Here's are some of my ideas (in order of degree of "idealism")

1) Don't have sex out of wedlock (difficult in our depraved society, I know) and/or remain faithful to the marriage vows at all cost during the children's minority.

Irrelevant. Most divorces aren't caused by infidelity.

2) Allow parents for whom divorce is inevitable to craft their own solution in accordance with the family's previously established standard of living and needs of the children (I think that' s where you're at.)

a) They already can make their own arrangements and do where allowable. That just allows the well off and/or mutually reasonable people to escape most of the horrors of family court.

b) You can't support two households (with the same income that supported one previously) and maintain the same standard-of-living for both. That's a fundamental part of the problem here - fathers are made to live out of cars when the wife already makes $200,000 a year (of course, those are just the empowered, vindictive type women that can afford enough lawyer time to make their ex's life a living hell).

3) Recede from "no fault" divorce back to a fault-based system in which the party who chooses to abandon the marriage would be required to rebut a presumption of parental fitness.

This presupposes that vindictive or whorish women or philandering men are necessarily stupid. They aren't. This would just give them either a "license to kill" within their marriages to force their spouse to leave first or give them an even bigger reason to falsely cry "child abuse" or "spousal abuse" to get the court on their side first. That's not an improvement.

4) Allow either parent to divest him-or herself of all legal responsibilty for the child.

Really?? Including child support? And this will help how??

If these are the best solutions you have, you are wasting your time.

GatorGirl: --the only ones who complain are the so-called "victims" of the system who have brought it on themselves by failing to adhere to their support orders.

While I don't believe a parent's income has anything to do with a legitimate mandate by the state for support (DNA Rules), I would add that most so-called victims are standing up against government oppression, not legitimate support orders. As a citizen, it is our duty to oppose such oppression. What they are "bringing on themselves" is the fight that we all should be joining.

The point often lost in this discussion is the purpose of the act that authorizes the establishment of a child support order in the first place (to collect support owed to "dependent children" by "absent parents"), and the limitations on the state's parens patriae powers. The state cannot dictate what parents spend on their children whether they are separated or married. Some of the proposals for change espoused here, likewise, exceed this limitation.

A criminal information filed against the Oklahoma man, James A. Circle, says he earned more than $39,000 a year and had been ordered to pay $350 a week for a child in New Jersey.

Well, more than $39,000 per year could very well be $39,001 per year. Assuming a figure close to $39,000, that would equal about $750 per week BEFORE taxes, about $525 per week AFTER taxes. Now subtract $350 from $525, and you have $175 per week to live off of.

That would barely pay the rent, never mind food, electricity, phone, heat, gas to get to work and back, car maintenance, clothes, and any gifts he might want to buy his children on their birthdays or for Christmas....

While the million dollar a year football player deserves to get slapped for his failure to pay child support, the above example is more typical of what is really going on this country as far as those labeled as "deadbeats".

"The guidelines put into use after the federal law was passed..."

This is my point. An amendment to an act cannot expand the class it was intended to affect, or the evil it was sought to cure (purpose), as was expressly stated in the act and confirmed by multiple courts since then. If the guidelines law is not unconstitutional as it is applied, it is unconstitutional on it's face. The bottom line is the limited power delegated to this administrative agency (under Title IV-D), and the courts, acting under such authority.

"I get a kick out of fathers who whine and wallow in self pity about the unfairness of being forced to support their children (no good father has to be forced to do so)."

So basically what you're saying is that you're proud of the fact that you post a reply without having actually read what was said, because Real Men enjoy making utter fools of themelves by 1) buying into the feminist claptrap lock stock and barrel, and 2) insulting men for saying the exact opposite of what they've actually said.

Wow, I've never met an actual human gelding before.

Did it hurt?

"The guidelines were there to protect the non-custodial parent, not the other. The amount of the ongoing award or the amount calculated for reimbursement of past support cannot be so much that it impoverishes the non-custodial parent"
Good grief don't tell me anyone actually believes this hogwash!
I'm afraid you missed the point. This was the original intent, and the only use that passes a constitutional test. I wasn't talking about current misuse (unconstitutional application). If you think you have a better handle on the legislative history of this act, I'm sure we would all welcome any evidence you may have.

Um, in a word, no.

I'm afraid YOU "missed the point".

Your original post, which I quoted in my reply, is couched in the present tense.

Read for comprehension, OK?

"the above example is more typical of what is really going on this country as far as those labeled as 'deadbeats'."

Yup. It's child's play (to coin a phrase) to create as many "deadbeats" as the agitprop du jour demands. Simply ratchet up the size of the tribute until the necessary percentage of men cannot pay, and voila, Instant Deadbeat Dads in any required number.

And that is exactly what is happening.

The blinded fools who taunt men by telling them to shut up and take it and/or shut up and pay it, are the same sort of blinded fools who cheered on Stalin's thugs as they rounded up farmers who were "unable to meet their quotas."

Same sh!t different country.

The guidelines are not the basis for an ongoing support obligation. The amount of the assistance payment is. More than that the state cannot demand. Reimbursement is a different story. If arrears are accumulated, the guidelines calculate the maximum reimbursement rate, until they are payed off. An ongoing obligation can be no more than the state would otherwise have to provide. (recover, avoid the assistance payments) The intent is implied from the subject and object of the law. Are they used properly? No.

Also: Do the courts or administrative agencies provide evidence of subject matter jurisdiction on the record as required of any limited jurisdiction tribunal? No. What evidence? Evidence the children in question are, or are likely to become dependent on the public for support, without contribution from an "absent parent". It is critical people understand what this term of art means. It is described in the act, state statutes and rules. If this is not proven, and it cannot be presumed, the order of this court is void.

"So, when did the purpose of the child support program change?"

I guess I should feel good for having backed you into the double corner of the checkerboard, but frankly I have zero tolerance for protracted stalemates.

First you argue that it's the case. I laugh at that, and you correct me by insisting that it was the case in the past. I correct you by pointing out that you used the present tense, and now you come back to square one, again insisting that it is the case.

Good bye. I don't feed trolls.

So, when did the purpose of the child support program change? Like I said, the act has only been amended. The subject matter is the same as it was from the beginning. Maybe I wasn't clear, but the child support program (including guidelines) was an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935, dealing with the same class.

I believe I get your point. I recall there was some confusion when you first introduced the idea. It's also the case that the federal government has no legitimate interest in non-welfare cases (actually their interest in welfare is suspect). They've inserted themselves broadly into domestic relations by misusing federal funds. The federal law as written, states that cs guidelines will be used and presumed correct in all cases and rewards states for the amount of child support paid in both welfare and non-welfare cases. In the Georgia case where the guidelines were declared unconstitutional, the purpose of maximizing federal funds was named as one of the unconstitutional aspects of the guideline.

The federal law as written, states that cs guidelines will be used and presumed correct in all cases and rewards states for the amount of child support paid in both welfare and non-welfare cases.

Yes, and it's the "non-welfare cases" part that most people don't understand. It's clear in the congressional reports they were dealing with those who were at risk of needing public assistance, without contributions from absent parents. A look at this case, Sullivan v. Stroop, 496 U.S. 478 (1990) will add clarification on the "absent parent"/"dependent child" parameters. The court describes "child support" as a term of art, and that Title IV-D was meant to work in tandem with Title IV-A (AFDC).

After 157 replies, I have yet to see even ONE which deals with the real tragedy in all of this! There seems to be two fronts ("The Deadbeats" vs. "The Moneygrubbers") but NO ONE has spoken of the only front that matters - the Right(s) of the Child!

It is the Child who has the God given right to be raised by both Parents (not the parents right to raise the child!). It is the parent's God-imposed RESPONSIBILTY to raise the child to best of thier ability!

Responsibilty, however, has gone out of fashion. Now only "my rights" are important. This makes me sick, as I see the effects of this attitude everytime the nc father of my step daughter decides, on his terms and his terms only, whether HE desires to see his daughter, regardless of her feelings in the matter.

To all of you who have suffered under the burdens of our present system - my deepest sympathies. Most of you have probably endured a lot of pain in order to be "allowed" to love your children. In most cases this probably was not even recognized by the other parent or the child, which is extremely sad.

I can only say though, that the saddest thing you will ever see, is the heartbreak in a child's eyes when they realize that one of thier parents, for whatever reason, just doesn't seem to have enough love to endure even the slightest hardship in the fulfillment of thier responsiblities.

Hillary is wrong: It takes LOVE to raise a child!

Understood, but Love is not measured in terms of child support payments? If the government stopped rewarding those who divorce with extraordinary payments from the one who was abandoned (more often, the father), much more thought would go into the decision to separate, or remain separated. Most fathers in this situation that I know are denied the benefit of their own income to heap benefits on their X. Many children are denied a decent home when they are with the ncp because they are being robbed by the state, and not to keep the cp from becoming impoverished. This fact doesn't escape most children. It breaks their hearts when either parent is hurt.

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